1. I have read about the invasion of the robots in the present day. “London Review of Books” has recently published a review of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's book - The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, Norton, 2014.

Is Piketty right? A critique from China. I suppose many have heard about the success of Thomas Piketty's book, published over a year ago. Its central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital is greater than the rate of economic growth, there will likely be an unequal distribution of wealth and humanity will be divided between a small minority of super-rich and the rest ("We are the 99%"), a situation bound to create social unrest. So there will be widespread instability – wars, revolutions, extremist political movements etc.

The echoes of the Paris terrorist attacks of January 7 have not faded out and there is a slight chance they will any time soon. But, as we could see, in the meanwhile, international events have unfolded rapidly and other issues may take the public's attention away from the Charlie Hebdo massacre. For example, in the January 23-25 weekend, there was a sudden outburst of violence in Eastern Ukraine, with Mariupol coming under heavy artillery fire and 30 civilian casualties. There has been a swift international response, from George Soros and Bernard Henry-Levy (Bernard-Henry Levy and George Soros , Save the New Ukraine, January 27, 2015- in “The New York Times”- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/opinion/bernard-henri-levi-george-soros-save-the-new-ukraine.html?ref=opinion&_r=2#story-continues-1story-continues-1 ), while Timothy Garton Ash ( Timothy Garton Ash, Putin must be stopped.